Product providers, such as airlines, hotel facilities, car rental agencies, cruise operators, tour operators, and travel packagers, can employ agents for reselling their products. For example, a person can book for a hotel room or can rent a car through a travel agency. The agents, while serving to boost the sale of the products, can present some disadvantages for the product providers, such as reducing name recognition, lacking customer database, and loss of revenue for the providers.
For example, the agents can offer discounts, e.g., selling the products at a reduced price as compared to the full price offered by the product providers. This can reduce the name recognition for the product providers, since when needing the products; the customers can first approach the agents, instead of the product providers, to purchase the products. For example, a travel agency can offer a room at a Marriott hotel at an 85% of the full price that a customer can purchase through the Marriott website. This can lead to customers avoiding the hotel websites since they are perceived as having higher prices for the same product.
Further, booking through the agencies can deprive the product providers the detail information of the customers, e.g., reducing the customer database of the product providers. The agencies can obtain a lot of information about the customers, such as the customer preferences toward travels and staying, but only sharing a minimum amount of information with the product providers.
Further, booking through the agencies can mean a loss of revenue for the product providers, since the agency prices, though significantly less than the full price can still be higher than the price that the agencies pay the product providers.
Thus there is a need for improving the operations of the product providers.